"Ballmer's visit takes place shortly after LG Electronics' executive said during an earnings conference session last week that the company is planning to focus on smartphones running on Google's Android mobile operating system. The executive also said LG is taking a step back from Windows phones powered by Microsoft's platform, adding that it will 'continue research and development efforts' on Windows Phones." Anyone surprised by this should have their peepers checked.

>How many times did phone manufacturers give you their latest version of Symbian ??

Phones have changed. We are past the days of Symbian and those phones didn't cost $500 each (or $200 with a $100/month plan).

>The max contract length I have seen is 2 years, upgrade or root your phone, your choice and most importantly you have that choice, because android is open source.

rooting my phone isn't a supported option any more than jailbreaking an iPhone. I own the device sure but they patch holes people use to get root access to them. Several companies have been shipping locked bootloaders etc.

This invalidates much of your argument because as long as manufacturers are taking steps to lock people out of their phones it is on them to provide updates.

Throw aside the religious GNU free vs closed arguments and what is the difference to the consumer between being a locked Android device with a dated code base and locked iOS. ICS being at 2.5% market share is a problem because at the current rate of deployment iPhone 5 is going to pass it in market share on launch day.

I think the mobile market moves too fast to make mistakes and this Java thing won't be good for Google. Verizon (largest carrier in the US) has only had iPhone available for a little over a year so iPhone might be positioned to steal back some market share in the next round of upgrades at least temporarily.